1. Field of Disclosure
The present disclosure relates generally to Bluetooth communication by an electronic device and, more particularly, to a method and an electronic device for processing various types of data on the basis of a modified Bluetooth low power protocol stack.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, a service for personal health care has been developed, in which health information of a user is measured using a personal medical device on the basis of a near field communication technology and the measured health information is transmitted through a gateway or a mobile device to a server.
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology is especially effective for power consumption and product size and is, thus, widely used in various health care-related sensors.
Bluetooth profiles correspond to standards for technologies in which Bluetooth can be utilized, and allow devices supporting the same profile to be compatibly operated. The health-care related Bluetooth profiles, which have been established thus far, include profiles for measuring blood pressure, glucose levels, and heart rates, a thermometer, and a pulse oximeter.
BLE technology is employed in hearing aids to provide various types of functions to users. In particular, BLE technology is applied in the form of an auxiliary device for improving the sound quality of a hearing aid when a sound device, such as a television, a telephone, or an MP3 player, is used. However, products recently released in the market include a product which includes a separate microphone receiving sound using Bluetooth technology and a receiver provided in the form of Bluetooth earphones.
Moreover, a hearing aid application enables an electronic device, such as a smart phone, to control a microphone and an amplifier of a hearing aid or control a receiver of the hearing aid to use the receiver as an earphone.
It is assumed that the hearing aid described herein is based on BLE technology. With the development of various applications relating to the hearing aid, various types of applications not using BLE technology can be used in the hearing aids which are based on BLE technology.
However, some commands defined in a non-BLE based hearing aid application are not able to be used in the BLE protocol stack structure of a BLE-based hearing aid due to certain limitations existing in Android platform implementations.
For example, some commands defined by the hearing aid application are as shown in Table 1 below.
TABLE 1CommandsDescriptionHA_SUSPENDAudio reproduction interruption (earphone)HA_RECONFIGUREAudio configuration change (earphone)HA_STARTAudio reproduction start (earphone)HA_CHECK_BATTERYBattery check (hearing aid)HA_CHANGE_GAINGain change (hearing aid)
Among the commands, the HA_CHECK_BATTERY and the HA_CHANGE_GAIN can be transferred to a hearing aid using the Generic Attribute Profile (GATT) and Attribute Protocol (ATT) in a hearing aid application of an electronic device (e.g. smart phone).
However, the HA_SUSPEND, the HA_START, and the HA_RECONFIGURE cannot be accessed by the hearing aid application of the electronic device. This is because, in an Android platform, the protocol for audio reproduction of Audio/Video Distribution Transport Protocol (AVDTP) exists on the basis of Bluetooth Basic Rate/Enhanced Data Rate (BR/EDR), and not on the basis of BLE, and the AVDTP can be used to transfer an audio stream, start command, environment configuration, suspend command, etc. to a counterpart device (e.g., the hearing aid). In other words, when a user starts or interrupts music through a User Interface (UI) using a media reproduction application, a media reproduction framework receives the corresponding command and transfers the command to an audio flinger. The audio flinger then transfers the command to the counterpart device. A codec configuration may be directly transferred according to a reproduced sound source regardless of the user input. For example, the user input may be directly transferred to the media reproduction framework. Therefore, a codec configuration may be changed according to a reproduced sound source without a direct relation to the user input.
The BLE technology, which has been developed for the purpose of low energy, does not have protocols for transmission of audio and audio-related commands. Therefore, audio and audio-related commands, such as the HA_SUSPEND, the HA_START, and the HA_RECONFIGURE commands, should be transmitted using an ATT in the BLE protocol stack. However, as described above, the media reproduction application can directly access only the media reproduction framework and cannot access a media task transmitting the corresponding commands.
Therefore, a method and an electronic device for processing various types of data on the basis of the BLE protocol stack are necessary.